Pew Research Center: Foreign-Born Share Falls Among 14 Largest U.S. Hispanic Origin Groups

The nation’s Hispanic population has long been characterized by its immigrant roots. But as immigration from Latin America slows, the immigrant share among each of the nation’s Hispanic origin groups is in decline, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This report explores data of the 14 largest Hispanic origin groups, unless otherwise noted.
The foreign-born share of Salvadorans, for example, fell from 76% in 2000 to 59% in 2013—the largest percentage point decline of any of the six largest Hispanic origin groups. Similarly, Dominicans, Guatemalans, and Colombians all had decreases of over 13 percentage points in their foreign-born shares over the same period. Mexicans, the nation’s largest Hispanic origin group, also saw a decline, though it was only 8 percentage points since 2000. A decline is underway among smaller Hispanic origin groups, too (see Appendix Table A1). Overall, the share of the Hispanic population that is foreign born has decreased from 40% in 2000 to 35% in 2013.
Despite falling immigrant shares across all Latino origin groups, fast Latino population growth has led to continued growth in the number of Latino immigrants (though growth has slowed in recent years). Among all Latinos, there were 14.1 million immigrants in 2000. By 2005, that number reached 16.8 million, and by 2013, there were 19 million Latino immigrants in the U.S. The same pattern is present among all Latino origin groups, though for three—Ecuadorians, Mexicans and Nicaraguans—the number of immigrants has declined since 2010.

Accompanying this report are 14 statistical profiles for Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Salvadorans, Cubans, Dominicans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Spaniards, Hondurans, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Argentineans, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, describing the demographic, economic and income characteristics, along with tabulations for each group’s U.S.-born and foreign-born populations residing in the 50 states and the District of Columbia (in the case of Puerto Ricans, tabulations for those born in the mainland U.S. and those born on the island are shown).

Each origin group’s characteristics are compared with all Hispanics and the U.S. population overall. The reports for the five largest Hispanic origin groups (Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Salvadorans and Dominicans) also include tabulations showing religious affiliation and identity preferences based on public opinion data from the Pew Research Center’s 2013 survey of Hispanic adults